Chapter 27
One and a Quarter Aeons Pre-Great War
Luc opened his eyes.
At the flash of cool silver, Lila withdrew her hand, but he caught her fingers and guided them back to his hair. He shut his eyes, and she was left alone with her thoughts again. Her terrible decisions.
Lila hesitated, her hand hovering over his forehead.
She hadn’t meant to touch his hair, but he’d laid his head down on her lap after a long session of teaching her how to mark her architecture sketches in the appropriate shorthand.
And she’d let him because, well, that was part of their deal, she supposed.
It had started with kisses but had progressed into a confusing mixture of lustful touches and tender ones.
Usually, Luc was the one initiating, though.
Lila touching him unprompted was new, despite that first kiss.
She held back partly out of guilt and partly out of fear, but at the moment, she was weak, and so was her conscience, and she felt only peace as she swept his blond hair away from his forehead.
His hair was soft and delicate. She liked feeling it slip through her hands.
She never wanted to touch Castor just to touch him, but she wouldn’t have minded staying there for a few hundred aeons, twisting Luc’s hair and twining it around her fingers.
She imagined them in their garden, lying on the soft, sweet grass, surrounded by the birds and flowers they’d drawn. The air would be scented with jasmine and honeysuckle, and nearby, the pitter-patter of water trickling over stone would lull them to sleep.
They would lie there forever and not be disturbed.
Outside of Heaven, outside of the Void, outside of everything.
“If I didn’t know better, I would think you like this.” Luc smirked, his eyes still closed. Of course, he had to say something and ruin the moment.
“Shut up.” Lila glared at him, though he couldn’t see.
“Will you massage my scalp?” He grinned.
“No.” She flicked his forehead.
“Ow!” Luc’s eyes shot open, and he frowned at her.
“I liked that.” Lila smiled sweetly.
“What is your problem?” Luc sat up and resumed his former position next to her, his back against the obelisk. “You could’ve just said ‘no,’” he informed her.
“Ah, but this way, I got you off my lap.” Lila leveled a cool stare at him, as if that had been her intention all along, when, really, she missed his weight and warmth.
“You’re impossible.” Luc sulked.
“And you should have stayed silent and still. But no. You always push things farther than they’re meant to go,” she scolded, then twisted away from him.
“Say what you want, Lila. You were enjoying that.” His accusation bore into her, but she didn’t turn her head.
A moment later, she heard him collect his scrolls from the ground and rise to his feet.
“So what if I was?” she mumbled, picking at her skirt. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
It can’t.
“Things mean what you want them to mean.” Luc moved to stand in front of her, a streak of white framed by the Void. “Like my drawings. They would be senseless doodles to most angels. But not to you and me.”
“Do you really think your world will be created?”
Luc nodded.
“Why? How can you just…believe that?” Even knowing who Luc was, she couldn’t make sense of it. Why would the Creator fashion a whole world at the request of one angel? Didn’t He have better things to do, whoever and wherever He was?
Luc shrugged unhelpfully.
“Haven’t you ever just known something?”
“I know we shouldn’t be doing this.” She gestured between them.
“That’s not what I mean.” Bending over, he placed his scrolls back on the ground, then offered her his hand. “Here. I’ll show you.”
“Show me what?”
“Take the hand, Lila.” Luc’s mouth quirked up. He was teasing her, and she didn’t trust him, but she took his hand anyway because that was what she did now, apparently.
Luc tugged her forward, then circled behind her.
“Okay, now”—she felt his heat at her back; he placed his hands over her eyes—“I want you to step forward until I tell you to stop.”
“What?” Lila gave a nervous chuckle, unused to the darkness. And also, perhaps, too used to his nearness. She resisted the urge to fall back into his chest. If she wanted him to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, it was an absurdity brought on by her altered state and nothing more.
Nothing more.
“Walk forward.” Luc’s warm breath whispered over her skin. His lips grazed the shell of her ear.
“Um…” Lila began to protest, but found she had nothing to say. Words had deserted her.
In lieu of them, she took a step. One small step, then a slightly larger one. Luc pressed his warm hands to her face, and his embroidered cloak shifted to drape both of their shoulders. They moved toward the Void, one tentative unit. Step by step.
As they crept closer and closer to the platform’s edge—surely, they were nearing it—fears shot up her spine like vines climbing a trellis. What if Luc didn’t tell her to stop in time? Or what if he did, but she didn’t react fast enough? Or what if she tripped and fell?
Lila had wanted to leap into the Void before, of course, but falling into it on accident didn’t suit her at all. If she was going, she would be going on her own terms.
Just as she was about to stop of her own accord, Luc wound his arm around her waist and pressed his mouth to her ear.
“Stop,” he murmured.
Lila opened her eyes and gasped. On reflex, she sunk into Luc’s body, and his hand flexed at her waist. One more step, and she would have been on the rim of the platform. Two more steps, and she would have been lost.
“I wouldn’t have let you fall.” Luc’s words fell tenderly on her ear, as delicate as the hair she’d been running through her fingers. Instinctively, she tipped her head up and met his eyes. Keen and focused, they shot through to her borrowed soul. His lips were half-parted. She didn’t breathe.
He was so beautiful up close, especially now with stubble lining his jaw and faint circles under his eyes from lost sleep.
Some angels would consider those imperfections, but she thought a little roughness gave him more depth, like shading in a painting.
She wanted to kiss his jaw and feel the stubble scrape her lips.
She wanted to run her tongue over it, along his jaw and under his chin.
Then she wanted to dip lower and lap at his throat.
“But you knew that.” Luc spoke, and Lila blinked. She stumbled back into her body.
“Or you wouldn’t have let me lead you out here.” He guided her back a few steps. When he let go of her, she turned her body toward him, half-dazed.
Luc stuck his hands in his pockets, and his lofty smirk returned, as if he knew what she’d been thinking. Her face burned.
“See?” he teased. “Sometimes, you just know things.”